For businesses, Frugl is an easy-to-use platform enabling businesses to list, manage and promote their events and offers, on the fly, and for a reasonably priced commission. Frugl’s next release will take advantages of the latest developments in personalisation, geo-location and two-tap payments to make purchases on the go in an easy and fun way.

Frugl’s marketplace can be viewed at frugl.com and also on the App Store.

Over the past year Frugl has built up their reputation amongst their consumers who, at their most active, are using their product 3x a week. Having laid this solid foundation, they are now well positioned to grow their user base and monetise the goodwill they have built up among their target customers of event promoters and other time-sensitive businesses.

Frugl has over a thousand promoters on their database whose inventory they have been marketing over the past year via a proprietary system they have created using an algorithm that searches the web to find the best events taking place in London for £10 and under, thus saving them hours of manual work. In future, this same dashboard will be opened out to include other cities, providing them with an invaluable sales tool.

Frugl has featured in Forbes, Metro, the Evening Standard, Business Insider and Reuters.

Closing on or before

Frugl closes on midnight Sunday 28th June.

Company Details

Management Team

Suzanne has been Publicist for over 20 years. She was Director of Noble PR for over ten years, managing a team of 15 staff. Suzanne produced several award winning PR campaigns including Dylan, Led Zeppelin DVD and Harry Potter (Guinness Book of World Records for fastest selling DVD).

Under Suzanne’s directorship, Noble PR grew from a £75k/year to a £1.3m business (£850k profit). Noble PR was a finalist in PR Week Small Consultancy of the year (2000).

Since January 2014 Suzanne has been mentoring start-ups in how to achieve PR on a shoestring as well as running workshops in the same through training organisation Monkfeet.

Tikiri has been leading the development of Frugl since the beginning. His background is in web design and development and for two years he has run Stunning PR’s Digital Division, creating websites and managing their social media strategy.

Lead Investor

An active early-to-late stage private investor, she is involved in a number of companies across a broad range of sectors (but with a focus on tech)

She also holds formal mentor roles with a number of the largest startup accelerators and incubators in the tech sector, as well as working with enterprise charities seeking to make funds and opportunities available to small businesses.

What makes you invest in a company and what is the single most important thing you consider when conducting due diligence?

I heard about Frugl via Angel Academe – a trusted network which I follow closely and one where a lot of due diligence has already been done on an opportunity, before it is presented to its members.

When I look at a company the first thing that will interest me is the product it presents. Regardless of the source and other leading signals, the product – as a priority, has to be one I understand. I will not invest opportunistically in a company that has a great pitch or proposition, if it is for a product or service I cannot identify with, or explain. When investing in small businesses, there is nothing like the amount of material available for due diligence that exists for FTSE-listed firms, and company information is a lot harder to secure. Lessons learnt via startup investment can come very expensive if you’re investing in a market you don’t understand!

If a startup clears my product and associated market and opportunity hurdles, the single most important element in my due diligence and decision on investing, then becomes the team behind the ambition. Any company’s strength will fundamentally rely on the people responsible for delivering – and experience has taught me that even the best ideas won’t go anywhere, without the right people behind them. In Frugl I see not just a great product, but also a great team behind it. I met the founder Suzanne Noble on a number of occasions prior to investing and, in every instance, was impressed by her drive, ambition and ability to get things done. Her regular updates on product development and business partnership growth since we first started speaking are testament not just to the product I’ve invested in, but also the people behind its operation.

Why did you invest into Frugl?

I like the product, I like its positioning and I see potential for it to grow in a revenue-generating and very scaleable fashion.

An events app for those on a budget, there is a natural market for the service that I believe is currently under-served by existing operators. A gap that Frugl have done well to identify and position themselves to serve.

With Frugl, participants on both sides of the platform stand to benefit from its proposition; the event and merchant clients gain exposure to a larger customer base – while the the consumers gain from the discounts and special offers that the platform makes available to them. This mutual reward structure meaning all participants to the platform benefit, which aids the retention and expansion of the total user base.

Of course, it wasn’t just Frugl’s ability to identify and deliver to an under-served market segment that impressed me, it is the monetisation potential of the opportunity. With multiple possible revenue streams to capture subscription, commission, marketing and revenue share opportunities, I feel I’m not just investing in a business idea, but a business in practice.

Finally, Frugl embody their approach of economy in their business operandi, as well as their platform. It has, to date, been built without any outside investment, which I consider another good indicator. Frugl are not just spending investor’s money- they have invested a considerable amount of their own time and money to get to where they are, which closely aligns their interests in the business, with mine.

What do you consider to be Frugl’s biggest challenge and what is being done to overcome this?

Money alone – particularly for a start-up in the tech space – is very rarely enough (in itself) to secure the kind of user base critical-mass that’s vital for success. You need the right people on board: strategic partners with an invested interest in taking your product to market and promoting it through their network.

Frugl have done a lot to achieve exactly that; in terms of scale, they have over 1500 promoters on their database and a number of media partners in play to promote their listings, a notable addition being their recent partnership with Virgin as a Start-Up Ambassador for 2015, which should also provide access to Virgin partners and a range of PR opportunities.